Cognac

Cognac (pronounced kohn-yak, or kaw-nyak (French))

(1) The brandy distilled in and shipped from the legally delimited area surrounding the town of Cognac, in western-central France (often with initial capital letters).

(2) Any French brandy (now technically incorrect since passage of various laws and WTO rules).

(3) Any expensive brandy (also incorrect).

(4) A town in south-west France famed for the brandy distilled from grapes grown in the region.

(5) A descriptor used for a range of brown shades from earthy to reddish-brown.

1585-1595: Borrowed from French Coniacke, (wine produced in Cognac region of western France), cognac’s origin was as a distilling of an otherwise unsaleable white wine.  The term Cognac brandy was in use as early as the 1680s and the sense of it being “a superior brandy” dates from 1755.  The city's name is from Medieval Latin Comniacum, from the personal name Cominius + the Gallo-Roman suffix -acum (from -aceus (indicating a resemblance). Cominius is an old Italic family name.

James Suckling 100 points crystal cognac glass from Lalique.

Although the traditional balloon glass was long associated with brandy and cognac, the distillers now advise the best choice is actually a “tulip” glass because it permits the aromas better to waft to the nose.  That's the most important part in enjoying Cognac; it's not so much drunk as breathed in, consumed mostly by a mere moistening of the lips while slowly but deeply inhaling; a nip of cognac can last a long time.  Enjoyed thus, it really should be taken neat.  

Named after the town of Cognac, France and known within the trade also as eau de vie, cognac is a brandy produced in any of the designated growing regions approved by the Bureau National Interprofessionnel du Cognac (BNIC).  In a pleasing irony, it’s distilled from an extremely dry, thin and acidic white wine thought undrinkable and unsuitable even for cooking yet which is ideal for distilling.  Grand Marnier, the cognac-based liqueur, from the French grand (great) + Marnier-Lapostolle (name of the manufacturer) was first sold in 1901.

Although the BNIC is the body which writes the rules and controls production, the industry is regulated under the French Appellation d'origine contrôlée which codifies all regulations including the naming requirements.  One linguistic curiosities of the quintessentially French business of cognac business is the official grades (XO, VSOP etc) are in English because they were standardised in the eighteenth century when the trade was dominated by the British, even before Pax Britannia’s control of the sea lanes.  The BNIC’s categories are:

VS (Very Special), denoted usually by the three stars (☆☆☆) on the label, VS designates a blend in which the youngest brandy has been cask-aged for a minimum of two years.

VSOP (Very Superior Old Pale), still often (though now less frequently) called Reserve, designates a blend in which the youngest has been cask-aged for a minimum of two years.  VSOP is sometimes incorrectly cited as Very Special Old Port or Very Special Over Proof.

Napoléon designates a blend in which the youngest brandy has been cask-aged for a minimum of six years.  Although long used as a marketing term (often as a synonym for XO), Napoléon was never part of the official naming system of Cognacs, appearing only in recent years, when, as a transitional arrangement due to stocks not being sufficient to permit implementation of a change in the rule governing use of the XO label, it was used specifically to denote those blends which, while aged the requisite six years, did not in other ways conform with the revised XO specifications.  Slated originally for introduction in 2016, the revised rules were instead gazetted in 2018.

XO (Extra Old), designates a blend in which the youngest brandy has been cask-aged for a minimum of ten years.

XXO (Extra Extra Old), designates a blend in which the youngest brandy has been cask-aged for a minimum of fourteen years.

Hors d'âge (Beyond Age), designates a blend, at least functionally equivalent to XO, but is applied by distillers to a cognac with some special characteristics which distinguish it in some way.

The naming conventions aren’t as old as the spirit.  When first produced from un-aged distilled grape wine from the Charente in the early 1600s, there was no system of ageing designations and it was sold simply as brandy, or, from the 1680s, Cognac brandy.  By century’s end however, the wine houses began storing the brandy in barrels of oak and to distinguish the aged product, this was called “old”, the un-aged, “young”.  The now familiar, hierarchical naming regime for the oak-aged spirit didn't begin until a batch called VSOP (Very Special Old Pale) was bottled for the Prince of Wales (George Augustus Frederick, 1762–1830; King George IV of Great Britain 1820-1830).

Lindsay Lohan color-co-ordinated in cognac (hair, eyes, outfit & nails), Christian Siriano Spring 2023 Collection Show, New York Fashion Week, February 2023.

The French wine industry was little-regulated until the phylloxera (a type of aphid) crisis of the mid-nineteenth century induced the government in 1888 to create the Viticulture Committee with a remit which grew gradually from disease control to encompass other regulatory aspects of the industry.  One concern was the widespread counterfeiting of cognac and in 1909 a decree was issued which defined the “Cognac” appellation area as the eight Cognac vintages named in a map based upon the work of geologist and paleontologist Henri Coquand (1813-1881).  It’s that map which remains the basis of the rule that cognac can only be produced within a delimited geographical area, defined by the 1909 decree which meant the “Cognac”, “Eau-de-vie de Cognac”, and “Eau-de-vie des Charentes” appellations are restricted exclusively to wine spirits grown and distilled within the defined regions of Charente-Maritime and Charente, as well as several villages in the Dordogne and Deux-Sèvres departments.

Later, the regulatory body was the National Bureau of Distribution of Cognac Wines and Eaux (NBDCWE) which in 1936 defined the conditions for the production of eaux-de-vie giving rise to the “cognac” appellation and two years later re-defined the appellation area, commune by commune, vintage by vintage.  The 1936 ruling outlined the requirements for distilled wine or brandy to be considered Cognac, mandating (1) the product must originate in the Cognac Appellation d’origine contrôlée (AOC) mapped that year, (2) that the grapes used to make cognac must come from one of the six designated growing areas (crus) located in the Cognac region (the six crus including  Borderies, Fins Bois, Bons Bois and Bois Ordinaires, Bois à terroirs, Grande Champagne and Petite Champagne), (3) that the grapes must come from one of the six approved appellations and (4), the cognac must be made from grapes blended from 90% eau de vie from Ugni Blanc, Folle Blanche and Colombard grapes with up to 10% Folignan, Jurancon blanc, Blanc Rame, Montils or Semillon grapes.

The NBDCWE was in 1946 replaced by the NIBC and in 1983 it formalized the long-established designations used to classify cognacs by age.  The designations are determined by the youngest eau-de-vie blended in the Cognac, thus nothing may be represented as cognac unless it has been aged at least two years (the VS (Very Special standard)).  The distillers may sell younger eau-de-vie as brandy (for example Rémy Martin’s Rémy V) but not labelled as cognac.  The point of the designations being based on the youngest part of the blend is significant in that a VS cognac may contain a proportion of much older eau-de-vie.  It’s for that reason some cognacs are sold without an official designation attached, if it’s thought by the house the label might confuse or inaccurately portray nature of the blend.  Rémy Martin’s 1738 Royal Accord by contains eau-de-vie aged between four & twenty years and thus, technically, is a VSOP but the house chose to forego a designation because it would tend to undersell the value of blend which included eaux-de-vie aged up to twenty years.

Most expensive: Henri IV Dudognon Heritage Cognac Grande Champagne.  Listed at almost US$2 million, it’s bottled in crystal which is dipped in 24-karat gold and Sterling platinum with 6,500 certified cut diamonds as decoration.  Said now to be aimed at the Middle-East market since the Standing Committee of the Chinese Communist Party's (CCP) Politburo cracked down on such extravagances, it’s assumed not many mix this with Coca-Cola.

Highly regarded: Remy Martin’s Louis XIII Grande Champagne Très Vieille Age Inconnu (pre-1950).  There was an official price list on which this appeared but, because of limited supply, it’s really only indicative and most sell at auction, the highest known paid for a decanter thought to be the US$44,630 achieved in a private Hong Kong sale in 2013.

Most fancy box: Camus Cuvee 5.150.  Camus use a sequential numbering system for their more interesting releases, the 5.150 the fifth release in their master collection which marked the company’s sesquicentenary (150 years).  With production limited to a run of 1,482, thoughtfully the crystal decanter was supplied with a brace of tasting glasses, presumably to dissuade those buyers tempted to drink straight from the bottle.  According to Camus, the 5.150 is a blend of five distinct and rare eaux-de-vie from five different regions and is unique in the history of cognac.  A bottle was listed at US$13,500.

Most interesting choice of packaging materials: Hennessy Beaute du Siecle Cognac.  Unusually in an industry which tends to favor creations made from precious metals and stones when packaging its more extravagant products, Hennessy’s most expensive cognac comes in a one litre bottle and a container styled in the manner of an art deco jewel-box, rendered in aluminum and bronze.  Limited to an edition of one-hundred and priced at US$194,927, the designer was French artist Jean-Michel Othoniel (b 1964).

Most expensive by the glass: Croizet Cognac Leonie 1858. General Eisenhower is said on the eve of the D-Day landings in 1944 to have shared a couple of nips of the 1858 with Winston Churchill, the bottle liberated from somewhere.  One sold at auction in 2011 for US$156,760 but for a more manageable US$8,764, it’s available by the glass (a 40 ml (1.3 oz) nip) at the InterContinental in Hong Kong.  Founded in 1805, Croizet is one of the older cognac houses and bottles only single vintages, a rarity in the industry but not even they can replicate the original.  It was distilled with grapes picked from vines with a lineage back to those planted by Julius Caesar’s armies in 55 BC and is the only cognac of its kind left because the vines were destroyed in the great phylloxera crisis of the 1870s.  At US$8,764 a nip, supply is dwindling slowly but, once gone, that’s it.  To encourage consumption, the InterContinental Hong Kong’s Lobby Lounge uses it in what’s claimed to be the world’s most expensive cocktail, the US$13,919 Winston which includes also Grand Marnier, Chartreuse VEP and Angostura bitters.  Better value for money is probably the hotel’s VVIP Presidential Suite Cognac Croizet Experience which, for US$166,117, includes a two-night stay in the Presidential Suite, a bottle of the 1858, a paired menu created by their Executive Chef and exclusive access to the Cognac Croizet vineyards for up to four people in Charentes, near Bordeaux.  During the one-night stay, there's a tour of the estate, gourmet dining and a cognac-blending tutorial from the cellar master.

Best value: Frapin Château Fontpinot XO. It tends to retail around US$175 (US$2000 a dozen)) and is one of the most rewarding XO blends.  Although many treat the language of wine tasting with some derision, just inhaling the vapors of the Fontpinot XO really does  summon thoughts of dark chocolate, still juicy dried fruit, warm caramel and herbs.  There are many more expensive cognacs with a similar taste but few match the endless aromatics of this one.  It’s a economical purchase too because one tends to neglect drinking, just to longer enjoy breathing it in.

Oldest vintage sold at auction: Gautier Cognac 1762.  In 2020, a bottle of Gautier Cognac 1762, the largest of the three known still to exist, was sold by Sotheby’s for US$144,525.  In 1762, Britain was entering the Seven Years’ War, Catherine II was empress of Russia, Mozart was six years old and George Washington had just turned thirty.  Cognac remains cheap by auction standards, the record price achieved by wine being the US$558,000 realized by a 1945 Romanee-Conti while ancient bottles of single-malt Scotch whisky have sold for almost US$2 million.  The new owner was described only as “an Asian private collector” and Sotheby’s added the buyer would get to “enjoy a bespoke experience at Maison Gautier, courtesy of the distillery” as part of his winning bid.

The future of the contents isn’t known but the auction house claimed, though some two-hundred and sixty years on, it should still be drinkable.  Their expert revealed the opinion is based on (1) the ullage (level of liquid inside) which was high, suggesting that the seal had not been compromised so evaporation was thus minimal and (2) a pleasing OBE (old bottle effect), the quality of which is determined by whether it imparts either a pleasant “tropical” note or the less appealing “porridge-y” sound.  He did add however that because glass isn’t entirely inert, it would have imparted some flavor of its own.  That notwithstanding, he suspected the depth of flavor from grapes grown on ancient root stock could give the spirit a complexity different from that known in the modern era.

Proxemics

Proxemics (pronounced prok-see-miks)

(1) In sociology and psychology, the study of the spatial requirements of humans and animals and the effects of population density on behavior, communication, and social interaction.

(2) In linguistics, the study of the symbolic and communicative role in a culture of spatial arrangements and variations in distance, as in how far apart individuals engaged in conversation stand depending on the degree of intimacy between them.

1963: A blend created by US anthropologist and cross-cultural researcher Edward Twitchell Hall (1914–2009) for an academic paper published in 1963 (which built on ideas in his book The Silent Language (1959)), the construct being prox(imity) + -emics.  Proximity was a compound word, proxim(ate) +‎ -ity, from the Middle French proximité from the Latin proximitās & proximitāt-  from proximus (from the primitive Indo-European prokwismmos, from prokwe (from whence prope)).  The novel –emics was an extracted borrowing from the word phonemics (the study of phonemes or distinct units of sound in a language; phonology).  Proxemics is the noun, proxemic the adjective.

Empirical research

Proxemics is the study of human use of space and the effects that population density has on behavior, communication, and social interaction.  It’s one of a number of disciplines in the study of non-verbal communication, including semiotics (sign language), haptics (touch), kinesics (body language), vocalics (para-language), and chronemics (structure of time).  Analogous with the way animals use urine and physical posturing to define their territory, the idea is that humans use personal space and concrete objects to establish theirs.

The theory suggests there are four types of distances people keep: intimate (up to 18 inches (.5m)), personal (18 inches to 4 feet (.5-1.2M)), social (4 to 10 feet (1.2-3m)), and public (over 10 feet (3m+)) although those are the distances chosen deliberately by individuals; forced closeness such as experienced on public transport are not part of proxemics.  The theory exists within the discipline of behaviorism and is thus observational rather than being derived from explicit instruction which is why personal distance and physical contact varies by culture, the physical distance between communicators indicating also the nature of their relationship.  Beyond relationships, proxemics attempted to explain other cultural and anthropological phenomena, such as the organization of built environments and living spaces, furniture, walls, streets and fences all being arranged in ways that delineate territory, whether for living, working or meeting others; territories historically existing to provide comfort for inhabitants and induce anxiety in intruders.

Practicing pre-pandemic proxemics: The septuple of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) Politburo's Standing Committee at the Eighteenth Congress of the CCP, Beijing, November 2012.  Note the social distancing, an indication of early planning for the COVID-19 pandemic.  The unfortunate fellow (second from left) who spoiled the photograph by wearing the wrong color tie, was expelled from the party and transferred to the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (XUAR) as deputy assistant sanitation inspector.

Practicing pandemic proxemics: Lindsay Lohan in Dubai, April 2020, group photograph of a nonuple, expressing thanks to Dubai Police Force for their help.

Stack

Stack (pronounced stak)

(1) A more or less orderly pile or heap.

(2) A set of shelves for books or other materials ranged compactly one above the other, as in a library.

(3) As smoke-stack, a number of chimneys or flues grouped together (and used originally to describe an especially tall structure).

(4) A vertical duct for conveying warm air from a leader to a register on an upper story of a building.

(5) A vertical waste pipe or vent pipe serving a number of floors.

(6) In informal use, a great quantity or number.

(7) In radio, an antenna consisting of a number of components connected in a substantially vertical series.

(8) In computing, a linear list arranged so that the last item stored is the first item retrieved and an area in a memory for temporary storage

(9) In military jargon, a conical, free-standing group of three rifles placed on their butts and hooked together with stacking swivels.

(10) In air traffic control, as air stack or stack-up, groups of airplanes flying nearly circular patterns at various altitudes over an airport where crowded runways, a low cloud ceiling, or other temporary conditions prevent immediate landings.

(11) In historic English measure for coal and wood, equal to 106 cubic feet (3m³).

(12) In geology, a column of rock isolated from a shore by the action of waves.

(13) In poker and some other games, the quantity of chips held by a player at a given point in a gambling game.

(14) To arrange or select unfairly in order to force a desired result, especially to load (a jury, committee, etc.) with members having a biased viewpoint.

(15) In Australian slang, to crash (typically a bike, skateboard etc).

(16) In recreational drugs as "stacked pill", a dose (most associated with MDMA) with an external coating in several (stacked) colors.

1250–1300: From the Middle English stak (pile, heap or group of things) from a Scandinavian source akin to the Old Norse stakkr (haystack), thought to be from the Proto-Germanic stakkoz & stakon- (a stake), from the primitive Indo-European stog-, a variant of steg (pole; stick (source of the English "stake")), the source also of the Old Church Slavonic stogu (heap), the Russian stog (haystack) and the Lithuanian stokas (pillar).  It was cognate with the Danish stak and the Swedish stack (heap, stack).

Noted stackers, same cause; different effect: Liz Truss & Xi Jinping with their predecessors.

Especially in politics, the idea of loading the membership of some body (a committee, a branch meeting etc) so that votes may be controlled is an ancient (if not noble) practice but it wasn't described as "stacking" until the early twentieth century.  In some jurisdictions, the practice of "branch stacking" (paying for people to enroll in a political party, many of whom may not be aware of their involvement) has been made unlawful but the technique seems still widespread.  Recent examples at the more exalted level of executive government include Liz Truss (b 1975; UK prime-minister for a few weeks in 2022) who stacked her famously brief administration exclusively with her supporters regardless of their talent and Xi Jinping (b 1953; paramount leader of the People's Republic of China since 2012) who, when re-structing the seven member Standing Committee of the Politburo after securing a third term in office, ensured no dissenting voices were likely to be heard.  This worked out not well for Ms Truss; Mr Xi expects better things. 

Stacked: Lindsay Lohan photographed in a pleasing aspect.

Stack in the sense of Australian slang (often as "stacked it") means "to crash" in some way, typically from a skateboard, scooter or bike and (to clarify things) the word was memorably used by #metoo campaigner Grace Tame to explain an injury sustained just after she'd upset the ruling Liberal party.  In the sub-culture of recreational drugs, "stacked pills" are those with a layered color scheme suggesting some interesting variation of ingredients (although all the evidence suggests the finish is purely decorative); among the MDMA crowd "stacked disco biscuits" were said to be a 1990s favorite.  As applied to the (noun) shelves in libraries upon which books are (verb) stacked, use dates from 1879 and as a description of the chimneys of factories, locomotives etc it came into use in the mid-1820s.  The use in computing (the best known of which is probably the IP (Internet Protocol) stack)) dates from 1960 when the word was use to describe software consisting two or more components, the loading of which is dependent on an earlier part, hence the idea of layers which stack upon each-other.  As a modifier it was used to describe the haystack in the mid-fifteenth century and in industrial architecture the smoke-stack (a very tall factory chimney) dates from the mid 1820s (although the structures pre-date the use).  The use of smoke-stack was later picked up by naval architects and was applied also to steam locomotives although these exhausts weren't disproportionately tall.  The verb stack emerged in early fourteenth century agriculture in the sense of "to pile up the grain into a stack" and was thus directly from the noun.  Perhaps surprisingly, the adjectival use of stacked appears undocumented until 1796 when it was used as a past participle to describe the clusters of hay assembled at harvest but etymologists suspect it had long been in oral use.  The adjectival use of stacked to suggest a woman who is pleasingly (even perhaps slightly disproportionately) curvaceous dates from 1942.

DeSoto's stacked tailamps

1957 DeSoto Adventurer Convertible.

DeSoto's signature triple stacked taillamps were a footnote in Detroit's macropterous era of the late 1950s, the style making possible the distinctive vertical arrangement.  Chevrolet would for years make the triple lamps a trademark of their more expensive lines (although, apart from the odd special built for the show circuit, they resisted the temptation to add a third to the Corvette) but they always had them in a less memorable horizontal array.  DeSoto's motif was Chrysler's most successful use of the fins but it wasn't enough to save the brand  which was crowded out of the mid-priced market, not only by competition from General Motors (GM) and Ford but also by intra-corporate cannibalization, squeezed from below by Dodge and from above by Chrysler's new Newport line.  Demand for DeSotos collapsed and that so many were built in 1960 was simply to use up the large inventory of parts exclusive to the brand, the last of the line, heavily discounted, not sold until well into 1961.

Open stack exhausts

The exhaust systems of most internal combustion engines are designed to allow as efficient an operation as possible over a broad range of engine speeds while performing as quietly as is required.  Unlike engines used on the road, those designed for competition aren’t as compromised by the need for a wide powerband and quiet operation so open stack exhausts, optimized for flow and the reduction of back-pressure, are attractive.

Stacked: BRM P57 in its original configuration.

During the 1950s, despite engine capacity having being reduced from 4.5 (275 cubic inch) to 2.5 (153 cubic inch) litres, speeds in Formula One were increasing so the sport’s governing body (then the  Commission Sportive Internationale (CSI)), a crew almost as dopey about such things as the Fédération Internationale de l'Automobile (FIA) are now), reacted by imposing a further reduction to 1.5 litres (92 cubic inch).  The 1.5 litre formula ran between 1961 and 1965 but came under increasing criticism as being unworthy of Formula One status in an age when big-engined machinery in other categories was attracting such interest.  The rules did however compel designers and engineers to conjure up some exquisite voiturettes.  BRM’s jewel-like 1.5 litre V8 was the first since the one-off Mercedes-Benz W165 built for the 1939 Tripoli Grand Prix and proved successful, winning the 1962 drivers’ and constructors’ championships.  To extract the maximum from the tiny V8, BRM initially ran them with eight, slightly angled, open-stack exhaust headers which were effective but, because of the limits of the metallurgy of the era they were prone to working loose so, with only the slightest sacrifice in top-end power, during 1962 an orthodox horizontal system was fabricated as a replacement.

Stacked: Graham Hill, 14th BRDC International Trophy, Silverstone, 12 May 1962.

BRM's chassis for the 1.5 litre formula was actually ready before the new (P56) V8 so in 1961 it was fitted with the widely-used four cylinder Coventry Climax unit which proved uncompetitive against the various configurations of the V6 used in the Ferrari 156 F1 (the "sharknose").  Confusingly, in its debut season, BRM labelled the car the P48/P57 while in 1962 the official name was P578; subsequently just about everybody called the thing the P57 and although lacking the charisma of the earlier and later sixteen cylinder cars it was the factory's most successful engine/chassis combination and wasn't replaced until 1964, one private team even (without success) campaigning the P57 into 1965.

Destacked: Graham Hill, 1962 South African Grand Prix, East London, 29 December 1962.

Politburo

Politburo (pronounced pol-it-byoor-oh or poh-lit-byoor-oh)

(1) The executive committee and chief policymaking body of a Communist Party (often in lowercase).  In the English-speaking world, sometimes erroneously written as politbureau or in hyphenated form.

(2) A casual term for a senior policymaking body in a political organisation, generally consisting of members who either are appointed by the party in control of the organisation or who attain membership through their personal political affiliations (sometimes derogatory).

1917: From the Russian Политбюро́ (Politbjuró) as shortening of полити́ческое бюро́ (politícheskoe byuró) (political bureau).  As a general principle, a politburo, in general, is the chief committee of a communist party and often exercises executive authority. The German form is Politisches Büro abbreviated as Politbüro and, like the Spanish Politburó, is directly loaned from Russian.  Chinese uses a calque (政治局; Zhèngzhìjú in pinyin), from which the Vietnamese (Bộ Chính trị), and Korean (정치국, 政治局 Jeongchiguk) terms derive.

1917 and after

The first politburo was Russian, created in 1917 by the Bolsheviks, the initial membership of seven including Lenin, Zinoviev, Kamenev, Trotsky and Stalin.  Although the USSR’s Politburo was notionally the highest policy-making government authority, it was usually subservient to the office of General Secretary of the Communist Party, especially during Comrade Stalin’s (1878–1953; leader of the Soviet Union 1922-1953) time.  In an example of the re-branding which happened often in the USSR, it was known as the Presidium between 1952 and 1966.  Many communist nations adopted the model during the twentieth century but politburos exist now only in the five remaining communist countries, China, the DPRK (North Korea), Laos, Vietnam, and Cuba.  Those five long outlasted the Russian original which was dissolved in 1991 after the breakup of the Soviet Union.

Old white men: the Twenty-sixth Politburo (1981–1986) of the USSR (1981 press release).

The last four leaders of the USSR (Leonid Brezhnev (1964–1982), Yuri Andropov (1982-1984), Konstantin Chernenko (1984-1985) and Mikhail Gorbachev (1985-1991) all appear here.

Bachelorette

Bachelorette (pronounced bach-uh-luh-ret or bach-luh-ret)

(1) An unmarried young woman.

(2) In Canada, a term for a small apartment suitable for a single man (ie can accommodate bed, fridge, TV & microwave).

1935: Some sources date the word from 1895 but it appears more likely bachelor-girl was first seen in 1888 and bachelorette is an American invention first noted in 1935.  The construct was bachelor + ette.  Bachelor (the alternative spellings have included bachelor, batcheler & batchelor) was from the Middle English bacheler, from the Anglo-Norman and Old French bacheler (modern French bachelier), from the Medieval Latin baccalārius & baccalāris.  The ultimate source is murky and strangely, although Old French had bachelette (young girl) in the 1400s, it's something English seems never to have borrowed.  Bachelor proved adaptable and in addition to the familiar modern sense of “a man socially & legally able to marry but as yet unmarried” it’s been used of (1) the lowest grade of degree proper awarded by universities and other tertiary institutes of education, (2) a knight who had no standard of his own, but fought under the standard of another in the field (obsolete), (3) among London tradesmen, a junior member not yet admitted to wear the livery or emblem of the guild (obsolete), (4) a kind of bass, an edible freshwater fish (Pomoxis annularis) of the southern US and (5), as Knight Bachelor, the oldest and now lowest grade of knighthood in the UK’s honors system (and not part of the hierarchy of the orders of chivalry).  The –ette suffix was from the Middle English -ette, a borrowing from the Old French -ette, from the Latin -itta, the feminine form of -ittus.  It was used to form nouns meaning a smaller form of something.  Bachelorette is a noun; the noun plural is bachelorettes.  Unfortunately, the noun bacheloretteness seems not to exist.

Once were spinsters

While a noted bachelorette: Lindsay Lohan, wearing Fendi, at the opening of the re-designed Fendi Boutique, Rodeo Drive, Beverly Hills, Los Angeles, February 2008.  Ms Lohan's wedding was announced in 2022.

Neither bachelor-girl (1888) nor bachelorette (1935) can really be considered proto-feminist because neither replaced spinster; the latter merely re-defined as something applied to older un-married women; in the shifting hierarchy of misogyny, ageism prevailed.  It may thus be thought casual, female-specific ageism, especially because older, un-married men remain described as bachelors even if centenarians.  It’s not clear when spinster came to be thought of as disparaging and offensive but the usage certainly declined with rapidity after World War II and both it and bachelor have effectively been replaced with the gender-neutral single although in English common-law, the older forms lasted until 2005.  There's another quirk.  Middle French had the unrelated bachelette (young girl) which persists in the Modern French bachelière but that applies exclusively to students.  In the narrow technical sense, still sometimes insisted upon in British circles, a more proper neologism would be bacheloress, since -ess is the usual English suffix denoting a female subject, while -ette is a French-origin diminutive suffix, traditionally used to describe something smaller in size.  However, bachelorette was invented in the US where the -ette suffix can indicate a feminine version of a noun without implying a change in size.  In these gender-conscious times, the -ess suffix is anyway falling into disuse due to attempts to neutralize professional terms.  Except for historic references, it’s probably now obsolete and rejecting decadent Western ways, in China, females still unmarried by the age of 25 are classified as "leftover women".

Leftover women

Sheng nu (剩女; shèngnǚ), most often translated as "leftover women" is a phrase (usually considered derogatory), which describes Chinese women who remain unmarried by their late twenties.  First promulgated by the All-China Women's Federation (ACWF) as a promotion of government programmes, it’s been used in other countries but remains most associated with People's Republic of China (PRC).  As a demographic phenomenon, it was once unexpected because the conjunction of the PRC's one-child policy and the disproportionate abortion of female foetuses had led to a distortion in the historic gender balance.  Births in China since the one-child policy was introduced in 1979 have averaged 120 males for every 100 females compared to a global ratio of 103:107.

A bride with four suspected leftovers.

The term appears to have entered common-use in 2005-2006 and seems first to have appeared in the Chinese edition of Cosmopolitan.  Unlike most of Cosmopolitan's editorial content, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) took it seriously and instructed the ACWF (a kind of cross between the CWA (Country Women’s Association) and the PLA (People’s Liberation Army) to publish articles stigmatizing women still unwed by their late twenties, reminding them they have lost face.  Borrowing from Maoist tradition (if not theory), the ACWF provided a useful analysis of the problem, concluding that while “pretty girls” didn’t need much education to find a rich partner, “average or ugly” ones who seek higher degrees thinking it will “increase their competitiveness” in the marriage market are delusional; all that happens is they become old “…like yellowed pearls."  The rhetorical flourishes aside, they had a point.  As the numbers of highly educated women rose, the numbers of potential husbands they found acceptable did not.  What the distorted gender balance created by the one-child policy and the selective-sex abortion preferences had produced was an increasingly educated and middle-class female minority not impressed by a less schooled and more rural male majority.

Geographic distribution of leftover women, People’s Republic of China.

“Leftover women” seemed the choice in print but on the internet, the punchier 3S or 3SW (Single, Seventies (referring to the then prominent 1970s birth cohort) and Stuck) was also used instead of sheng nu.  There is an equivalent term for men, guang gun (bare branches (ie men who do not marry and thus do not add branches to the family tree)); shengnan (leftover men) does exist but is rare.

CCP demographers had expressed concerns about the social and economic implications of the one-child policy as early as the 1990s.  In the new century, the policy was first selectively relaxed, then revised to permit additional children for those selected by the CCP as desirable breeders and, on 31 May 2021, at a meeting of the of the CCP Politburo, the three-child policy (三孩政策) was announced.  The session, chaired by Xi Jinping (b 1953; CCP general secretary 2012- & PRC president 2013-), followed the release of the findings of the seventh national population census which showed the number of births in mainland China in 2020, at twelve million, would be the lowest since 1960, an indication of the demographic trend causing the ageing of the population.  The Xinhua state news agency then announced the three child policy would be accompanied by supportive measures to “maintain China's advantage in human resources” but surveys suggested the section of the population the CCP would like to see produce three children per household were generally unwilling to have even two, the reason overwhelmingly the high cost of living in Chinese cities.  The announcement on 26 July 2021 permitting Chinese couples to have any number of children was thus greeted by most with restrained enthusiasm.

Nomenclature

Nomenclature (pronounced noh-muhn-kley-cher, noh-men-kluh-cher, noh-muhn-kley-choor or noh-men-kluh-choor

(1) A set or system of names or terms, the terminology used in a particular science, art, activity etc, by an individual, community or institution.

(2) The names or terms comprising a set or system.

1600-1610: From the sixteenth century French nomenclature, from the Latin nōmenclātūra (a calling by name, list of names), from nomenclator (namer), the construct being nōmen (name), from the primitive Indo-European root no-men- (name) + calator (caller, crier), from calāre (call out), from the primitive Indo-European root kele- (to shout); a doublet of nomenklatura.  In many cases, the words classification, codification, glossary, locution, phraseology, taxonomy & terminology will be synonymous and interchangeable.  The related forms include nomenclatural, nomenclatorial & nomenclative, nomenclaturally, nomenclator, nomenclatory (and the equivalent systems using exclusively numbers: numericlature.  The noun plural is nomenclatures.

In Ancient Rome a nomenclator was (1) the title of a steward whose job was to announce visitors and (2) a prompter who helped a politician seeking election recall names and pet causes of his constituents.  The meaning "systematic list or catalogue of names" is attested from the 1630s; that of "system of naming" dating from the 1660s while the modern sense of "the whole vocabulary or terminology of an art or a science" is from 1789.  In English, circa 1600, it also had the meaning “a name” but, being a complicated way of saying something simple, this quickly went extinct.

In the Soviet Union, nomenklatura was the "list of influential posts in government and industry to be filled by Communist Party appointees".  The origin of this predated the formal creation of the USSR (Union of Soviet Socialist Republics; (Союз Советских Социалистических Республик, СССР the Russian abbreviation in Cyrillic, transliterated as SSSR in Latin script)) and was emblematic of the centralization of authority and decision making the party organization imposed almost immediately on the state.  It was too indicative of the way the dictatorial structure of the party, mapped onto the mechanism of the state would, disguised sometimes as a collective model, to almost the end distinguish the USSR from many of the non-communist models of authoritarian rule which flourished during the twentieth century, their corporatist nature often misunderstood because of the way the label “dictatorship” was applied.

Formalized during 1919-1920, the party’s system of control was created in the months after the revolution, the Politburo (a creation of the party’s Central Committee which, technically, exercised only the authority delegated by the committee) dealt with all matters of significance and thus reserved the key decisions exclusively for their remit, the routine and procedural matters handled either by the Orgburo (essentially the body which enacted the Politburo’s edicts and coordinated the regional organizations and thus best understood as a kind of party chancellery) or the famously bureaucratic Secretariat.  It was in the Secretariat (where the paperwork from the higher bodies tended to end up) that the need for a reliably indexed filing system to conquer the developing administrative chaos quickly became apparent and nomenklatura was part of the system.  Accordingly created was the Учраспред (Uchraspred), (the Department of Files & Assignments) which, operating rather as gangsters would run as HR department, handled the registration of party members and their subsequent allocation to positions below the higher-level appointments, which remained in the gift of the Politburo or Orgburo.

Comrade Vyacheslav Molotov (1890–1986; early Bolshevik, Soviet foreign minister 1939-1949 & 1953-1956), Edward R Stettinius Jr (1900–1949; US secretary of state 1944-1945 and ambassador to the UN 1945-1946 (“Stettinius the younger”, his father having been assistant secretary of war 1918-1921)) & Anthony Eden (1897–1977; thrice UK foreign secretary and prime-minister-1955-1957) at the foundation conference of the United Nations, San Francisco, 1945.

Predictably, the structure provided much scope for patronage, nepotism and factionalism but, handling annually thousands of movements, it nevertheless demanded efficient administration, something lacking until in 1921, Vyacheslav Molotov, just elevated to the Central Committee and Orgburo, was put in charge of the Secretariat.  Studious, serious (of the many photographs which exist, in few is he smiling) and with a mind which if not as quick as his colleagues was certainly thorough, he excelled in the role and though the more intellectually illustrious were inclined to decry his “needless and shameful bureaucratism", they couldn’t not be in awe of his capacity to spend long hours sitting at his desk, creating order our of what was a post-revolutionary mess, comrade Lenin (Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov 1870–1924 and known by his alias Lenin; revolutionary, political theorist and founding head of government (Soviet Russia 1917-1924 and the Soviet Union 1922-1924) dubbing him “stone ass” (often misquoted as “iron ass”), a moniker later used (behind his back) by the negotiators from the West with whom he sat through many meetings and conferences during his long tenure as Soviet foreign minister, his intransigence legendary even by diplomatic standards.  Other ambassadors dubbed him "comrade nyet"; nyet a Russian word meaning a particularly blunt "No!".  "Stone ass" was most productive during those long sessions at his desk, producing endless streams of paper which fed a burgeoning bureaucracy; Lenin also dubbed him "comrade filing cabinet".        

Stone ass: comrade Molotov sitting at his desk.

The English nomenclature was a borrowing in the 1600s of the sixteenth century French which was from the Latin nōmenclātūra (assignment of names to things, mentioning things by name, a list of names).  Almost immediately, the word was picked up by many branches of science (most notably in botany or zoology) where it gained the definitive senses of “a systematic assignment of names” and later in the same century, “the technical terms within a science”.  The noun nomenklatura existed in Russian since the early nineteenth century but it was particular and well-publicized use by the Soviet communists which made it known in the West.  Understanding its implications, the Kremlinologists in the 1950s adopted nomenklatura when discussing bureaucracies and administrative structures in both the USSR and other communist states.

Memo: Team Douglas Productions, 29 July 2004.

Also of interest to students of nomenclature is the process by which the names of people can become objects applied variously.  As Napoleon, Churchill and Hitler live on as Napoleonic, Churchillian and Hitlerite, on the internet is a body of the Lohanic.  Universally, that’s pronounced lo-han-ick but Lindsay Lohan has mentioned in interviews that being a surname of Irish origin, it’s “correctly” low-en, a form she adopted early in 2022 with her first posting on TikTok where it rhymed with “Coen” (used usually for the surname “Cohen” which is of Hebrew origin and unrelated to Celtic influence).  For a generation brought up on lo-han it must have been a syllable too far because it didn’t catch on and by early 2023, she was back to lo-han with the hard “h”.  Curiously, while etymologists seem to agree that historically lo-en was likely the form most heard in Ireland, the popular genealogy sites all indicate the modern practice is to use lo-han so hopefully that’s the last word.  However, the brief flirtation with phonetic h-lessness did have a precedent:  When Herbie: Fully Loaded (2005) was being filmed in 2004, the production company circulated a memo to the crew informing all that Lohan was pronounced “Lo-en like Coen” with a silent “h”.